


we watched it all go up in flames

by princegrantaire



Category: The Libertines
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-28
Updated: 2016-03-28
Packaged: 2018-05-29 17:12:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6385156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/princegrantaire/pseuds/princegrantaire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter and Carl are soulmates but things are never quite that easy. (Or, Peter and Carl are soulmates but they're also meant to be enemies).</p>
            </blockquote>





	we watched it all go up in flames

**Author's Note:**

> \- title from 'wolfman' by bb brunes and carl barat  
> \- mostly based on this post [x](http://enexcelsis.tumblr.com/post/141262026442/chekhovsgum-cindymoon-im-so-tired-of-the-au)

Carl’s names come in remarkably late, as if fate can’t quite decide who he should be tied to. Both names fill in at once, which is equally unusual but not entirely unheard of, much like most of Carl’s life.

When Carl is ten, and his sister is twelve and already has part of the names on her wrists filled in, Carl dreams of his soulmate. By the time he’s fully awake and coherent enough to tell anyone about it, he has forgotten most of the details, save for the fact that he’s fairly certain one of the names started with an “ _E_ ”, written in someone’s loopy handwriting.

Nothing ever comes out of the dream and he forgets about it the very next day, only to remember it decades later and to find himself wondering whether it was a sign after all.

-

Five years later, when he’s fifteen, he finally gets his names, only to be immediately horrified when he manages to read them. By then he had almost resigned himself to an existence without a soulmate (or an enemy), half convinced that his twin’s death had paved the road for other such disappointments and entirely sure that destiny wanted him to be alone.

“ _Peter_ ” is written in the exact same place on both his wrists, in the exact same handwriting that takes him nearly an hour to decipher the first time he sees it.

Even then Carl knows all too well that having the same name on both wrists could never mean anything good. In fact, he can’t think of a single person, famous or otherwise, who had experienced something like that.

That thought in itself is horrifying but paired with the fact that it’s clearly a boy’s name, well, it all turns out to be a bit too much for Carl, who spends half of the day locked in his room. It takes him another day and a half to break the news to Lucie and his mother, who seems much more concerned about Carl’s red face and puffy eyes than about the fact that he’s finally gotten his names.

Lucie tells him he has to get over it eventually, _has to_ as if life itself doesn’t have something against Carl. It’s not just the matter of being destined to fall in love with a boy, it’s the fact that the boy might end up ruining him.

Carl spends the majority of his teenage years wishing and maybe even praying that the names don’t refer to the same person, that he’s not destined to be abandoned by his soulmate. It’s also during those aimless and rather painful years that he takes to tying bandanas around his wrists, one last line of defence against anyone willing to pry and an attempt at pretending he’s not already doomed.

If life offers him just one brief chance at happiness, and for all its misfortunes it might as well, then Carl refuses to take it only to lose it almost immediately.

-

For all his protests and denials, at nineteen, Carl meets Peter Doherty and feels almost complete for a few glorious years.

The first time Carl sees Peter Doherty, he’s half asleep on the couch in Amy-Jo’s cramped flat. Peter practically bursts into the room, yelling something at Amy-Jo, who is, tragically, not home.

“Oh! You must be the room-mate!” Peter exclaims when he spots him and Carl sits up, still disoriented.

Carl feels a violent lurch somewhere inside him as soon as makes eye contact with Peter. Judging by the boy’s suddenly shocked expression, he must have felt the same thing.

Peter is eighteen and baby-faced with too wide eyes and wild hair. He’s also entirely too _unpredictable_ because a moment later his hands are working on untying one of Carl’s bandanas.

Carl doesn’t mean to punch him, he really doesn’t but it happens anyway, out of pure instinct more than anything else. He’s always taken good care not to take his bandanas off around strangers, especially since he tried to carve out one of the names a few summers ago.

-

When Amy-Jo gets home, she finds her brother holding an icepack to his eye and talking excitedly to her room-mate about The Smiths. She knows for a fact that Carl, her room-mate, has never heard a Smiths song in his _life_ and she pities her baby brother for a few seconds.

“What happened to you?” she asks, pointing to Peter’s eye.

“Carl _os_ ,” Peter replies but he’s smiling.

-

Surprisingly enough, as it is a rather common name, Carl hasn’t met a great deal of Peters in his life and never one as fascinating as this one. He’s almost sure Peter is his soulmate (or enemy? or worse, both) and he’s never been so scared in his life, yet he can’t quite bring himself to leave Peter’s company.

Peter comes to London every two weeks or so and they become close friends, especially when Peter’s visits turn out to be more for Carl than for Amy-Jo, but there’s an underlying (but not entirely mysterious) tension between them at all times.

Peter’s clothes are always ill-fitting, the sleeves too short, and Carl has seen the “ _Carl_ ” written on both his wrists far too often but neither of them has ever mentioned it. Sometimes he suspects that’s why Peter always comes up with all sorts of nicknames for him ( _Carlos_ , _Biggles_ , _Pigman_ , _Spaniel_ , the list goes on and on), as not to face the reality of their destiny.

Carl’s heard stories of soulmates managing to avoid a meeting or of soulmates living and dying continents apart but he doubts any of them had done it by choice. He doesn’t think he’d like to be the first one to deny himself the pleasure of meeting his soulmate, even if it doesn’t last long.

It takes him exactly two months and three days to tell Peter the truth. It’s during one of those evenings when they’re both a little drunk and Peter has begged him to teach him to play guitar, even if Carl himself isn’t that good at it.

“There’s something you need to know,” he mumbles and puts the guitar down.

Peter looks up at him with those Bambi eyes and Carl’s heart nearly melts. He unties his bandanas with shaking fingers and shows his wrists to Peter, struggling not to close his eyes.

Peter is just staring at him, at a loss for words for the first time in his life. He gently takes Carl’s hands in his and the names on their wrists glow faintly for barely a second.

A moment later Peter’s lips are on Carl’s but Carl is completely frozen. He’s found his soulmate but that means the chance to lose him is now more real than ever. He pulls away almost immediately and retreats to his room with a sad smile. Peter has to coax him out a few hours later.

-

Peter seems to think they’re invincible after that. They both drop out of university, not like Carl’s half-hearted attempts at being an actor would ever work out, and move in together, leaving Amy-Jo baffled and Peter’s parents wary of the stranger that seems to have swept Peter off his feet.

They start a band, even though Peter still doesn’t really know how to play guitar and Carl can’t figure out how to teach him. They’re good though, or at least Carl likes to think so. He really believes Peter has something special, a certain gift Carl can only dream of.

It’s during this period that they meet another Peter, a certain Peter _Wolfe_ , and Carl’s heart soars with hope, especially when he realizes just how much he hates this sinister new “friend” of theirs. Maybe he’s not destined to lose _his_ Peter after all.

Carl forgoes his bandanas for a while and almost forgets the weight of his worries, as if anything could ever be that simple.

Trouble starts soon after that because fate has never been kind to either of them but seems to have something against Carl in particular.

-

A few years later, as Carl lies in his hospital bed, half-blind and barely registering the sound of Peter crying next to him, he realizes they’ll never make it out alive if they stick together.

He’s a bit sorry for McGee’s sink though but doubts they can pay for it, not at the rate Peter’s spending money. Carl drifts in and out of consciousness a few times but for some reason that’s the only thought that he returns to again and again.

Maybe because that’s the only thing that seem even remotely real about this whole situation. He isn’t even entirely sure _why_ Peter is here, the same Peter he hasn’t talked to for weeks even though they were supposed to be writing songs, to be working on an album. They’re always writing songs these days, just not with each other.

Carl feels angry, at himself, at Peter, at the fact that they’re permanently stuck with each other whether they like it or not. He remembers the summer he tried to carve out the names and he remembers the tattoos they got in New York not too long ago and the thoughts, somehow connected in his mind, make him a bit sick. He tells as much to Peter but Peter just calls one of the nurses, as if Carl hasn’t been awake for a while already.

-

Carl’s left with a wonky eye and a few weeks of wearing a bandana as an eye-patch and nothing else to show for the fact that he’s somehow survived the whole ordeal. He used to believe that falling out with Peter would finally kill him off but as usual, he’s almost entirely wrong.

Later he says he’s always expected this to happen and it’s not entirely a lie. He used to remind himself almost daily that Peter isn’t _just_ his soulmate, that he’s not that lucky.

A phone call in some French hotel that haunts Carl’s dreams for years only confirms what he’s always known, if at least one of them wants to survive, they need to stay away from each other.

He thinks kicking Peter out of the band isn’t his decision to make, maybe because it’s never really been _his_ band, but he does truly believe it could be the one thing that can save Peter.

As it turns out, the break-up only causes them to sink deeper into the self-fulfilled prophecy that’s been following them around since they met.

-

The years between that and an eventual reunion are something of a blur for Carl, who has always been prone to injuries and illnesses but becomes even more so during his years with Dirty Pretty Things.

Anthony and Didz are nice, Carl loves them dearly but never grows to trust them enough to show them the names on his wrists. For all intents and purposes, Carl doesn’t have a soulmate or an enemy anymore, he’s only tethered to life by his own desire to make it through (even if tends to vanish sometimes).

Annalisa isn’t much help either and Carl knows he’s always been horrible to her, he even regrets it later on but he suspects that, at the time, he had just seen her as a cheap replacement for Peter. Their relationship had been practically predestined to fail from the start.

He’s not as sad as he’s empty and only feels a glimmer of his old spark on the rare moments when Peter makes a reappearance. Even then, he doesn’t allow himself to get too close because he knows Peter’s own life is in shambles, because sometimes he’s proud of the reputation he’s mysteriously gained (the fact that the press seems to consider him the “sane libertine” baffles him for years, in the old days it was Peter who took care of him and it was Peter who was always the strong one and Carl can’t quite remember when that changed).

Not having Peter next to him makes him feel oddly off balance (and if he wonders whether he felt the same when he lost his twin, he doubts anyone can blame him). Even if he’s still got Gary and Anthony and Didz, Carl’s almost surprised when he doesn’t see Peter somewhere around him.

There are exactly two attempts at reunions and they both fail spectacularly. At the time Carl hadn’t known why, couldn’t imagine any reason for it, but these days he thinks he knows it’s because neither he nor Peter really wanted a reunion, weren’t ready to sort themselves out just yet.

-

Carl meets Edie Langley on a rather dreary day in a recording studio in London. His life doesn’t start to make sense right after that and it’s not the instant spark that he had with Peter, there’s no moment where their eyes meet and Carl knows she’s the one for him but she does manage to quieten something in him and that’s somehow enough.

Edie manages to save him even if they’re not bound together like he and Peter were. She manages to save him not because she _has_ to but because she  _wants_ to and that makes all the difference to Carl.

One day he realizes that if Edie leaves him, he will eventually be able to move on. The thought feels like betrayal and it scares him to no end. He remembers not being able to function without Peter for ages and being almost proud of that, of being proven right, of having one final piece of evidence that proves their love meant everything.

It takes Carl a week, the longest week of his life, to realize that loving someone again the same way he had loved Peter would destroy him. He wonders how anyone manages to stay with their soulmate, wonders whether having a soulmate is that volatile and all-consuming for everyone or if the fact that they were meant to be enemies as well is what changed the game.

He will never love anyone the way he loved ( _loves_ ) Peter and that’s an entirely good thing. Edie’s presence is enough to make him happy, to keep most of his fears at bay and that’s more than he’s ever dreamed of.

At one point, during the first few weeks of knowing Edie, when they’re not quite dating yet, Carl remembers the dream he had when he was about ten and wishes that he did have Edie’s name on his wrist, wishes that things were actually that simple.

Still, even when they have to respectfully turn their eyes away from each other’s wrists, they’re convinced they have a future together. Carl is, for what he claims to be the first time, truly content and Edie seems happy enough with him.

There are still moments when he worries he’s taking too much from Edie, making her miss out on meeting her _actual_ soulmate. These moments usually pass without incident because as soon as Edie smiles at him, he realizes that, as selfish as it might be, he does love her with everything he has.

-

Carl knows his chance with Peter has passed. He can’t go back to that, not after he’s actually had a taste of happiness. They’re still bound together, always will be, but Carl doesn’t know if he can ever trust Peter again.

Still, when Peter stumbles into his life and knocks everything out of balance as he’s prone to do, Carl can’t exactly say _no_ to a reunion. He’s never been able to resist Peter’s eyes.

What really shocks him though is the fact that Peter does get better or at least seems to make an actual effort. Not only that but during the brief trips Carl allows himself to make to Thailand, they actually end up writing a few songs, songs that soon turn into an album. _An entirely new album._  Carl’s almost as shocked as the press.

Edie’s worried about him, Carl’s certain of that much, but then again even _he’s_ worried about himself, about the family he’s somehow managed to create in Peter’s absence.

Carl always used to think that if Peter ever strolled back into his life, their encounter would have the same result as that very first one. As if Carl’s life is somehow stuck in an agonizing loop. He’s starting to believe that less and less.

-

What’s different about them this time around is themselves. At first the changes were imperceptible but as time goes on, Carl realizes that he and Peter are barely their former selves anymore and that’s the best possible thing that could have happened to them. They’re happier now, more open, not quite as willing to give in to some ill-fated prophecy.

With Edie by his side, Carl’s sure they can make it to the end this time. What he and Peter have nowadays is hardly the volatile love affair they had once but at least it’s less likely to destroy them, at least they’re happy.

**Author's Note:**

> \- this is the longest thing ive ever written, im slightly horrified  
> \- i'm aware the timeline is all messed up, lets say it was an artistic choice  
> \- i really really hope everyone enjoyed reading it!


End file.
